


As much as I take issue with the word.

by prodigalDaughter



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Coming Out, Gen, M/M, as is the pale Roxy/Dirk, is a confusing business, mostly it's Brother Feelings, the Jake/Dirk here is just discussed, when you don't think sexual orientation is a thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2012-12-22
Packaged: 2017-11-22 00:17:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/603679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prodigalDaughter/pseuds/prodigalDaughter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dirk is good at research. He's researched the era from which his friends and brother hail to no end, and it's become clear to him that there are some things one ought to confess to one's family when one meets them, even if those things are not in your opinion a thing. Comedic coming out fic, originally written for the meme.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As much as I take issue with the word.

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt was for Dirk coming out to Dave. I attempted to reconcile that with Dirk not liking labels. This happened.

Eight people. Four white-blonde, four dark-haired, four boys, four girls. Four in prescription lenses, four without. Four with hollywood teeth, four with variations on never-wore-braces. Four in everyday clothes, four in the garb of gods. Four grew up entirely alone, or nearly so, while four had every comfort.

Despite the patterns, each person stands out. Only one has hair down to her thighs, after all-- you recognise her as Jake's grandmother from old pictures he scanned and sent you nights upon nights ago when he was feeling generously sentimental and up too late. Only one wavers in her walk, poor Roxy, grinning broadly and brokenly at her aloof young mother. Only one has the high cheekbones and sun-dark skin and lively green eyes that you fell in love with years ago. 

And only one is your brother. Young, here, without the scruff of a beard you'd expected from the photos and interviews-- he's your age, he's probably not even shaving yet, even you only have sideburns so far, but that isn't the point, his lack of facial hair is so far from the point it couldn't even get in touch with the point if they had their very own red telephone-- his lack of an expression is the same, the sweep of his pale hair is the same, and you wonder if he doesn't have freckles like you do because his skin isn't disposed to it or if he's managed to avoid the sun in ways you couldn't when your only hope of fresh food was crawling down the flayed skeleton of your building to catch and kill the Empress's fish. 

You're getting sidetracked again. Each other set has gravitated towards each-other, but you've been thinking about this too much to step to him without it feeling like a surrender. You stand your ground, and the two of you are the eye of the storm, surrounded by riotous laughter and familial embraces. He's the one who comes to you, and you allow a small portion of your brain, sectioned off carefully from the majority of it running and re-running your scripted lines, to damn him for his calm keeping it from being a defeated gesture.

He opens his mouth to speak, but you get there first.

"I'm gay."

His mouth closes. His eyebrow quirks. It is clearly still your turn to speak. Your script disappears.

"I mean, as much as I take personal issue with the word in such a usage. I've just been thinking about this a lot over the past week of breath-bated anticipation for your arrival, because apparently my equivalent to Jake polishing his guns and Jane trying hand buzzers on everyone within three miles and Roxy crying all over me is to quietly sweat blood over whether or not my perfect stranger of a brother will approve of my relationship. Anyone else's opinion could go straight to hell, but while yours will not actually change anything in the long run, it could knock me significantly off-kilter which is something I try to prevent whenever possible. 

"My original point was, I thought it best to use terms you would be more familiar with, being from a space not merely antediluvian but antidiluvian, both because your comprehension would be instant and also because phrasing this sort of thing as a matter of identity makes it bizarrely simpler to talk about. I'd hardly make a good first impression walking up to you and saying 'I am highly aroused by man-ass and cock, and not by the equivalent feminine attributes'. Though it's entirely possible I've made a bad impression anyway; studying the history of my own universe can only bring me so far, and I'm not sure to what extent your society was or was not biased against such things. I know that they had specific words for it, obviously, as I just used one, which implies that it was a thing to at least some extent, but I'm not sure how similar that state would be to how things were some centuries ago on our Earth. 

"In any case, and while I'm apparently already chattering on with all the the restraint and taste of an avalanche, I just felt it was something best to get out of the way before the necessary pleasantries, as if you do take issue it might very well ruin them."

He is still looking at you. You become vaguely aware that the background noises of your respective friends getting on like so many burning houses have hushed.

"Done?"

You are. You nod. His voice is as deep as yours, and you have a sudden yet deep urge to punch yourself in the face. You can see him watching you for any change in expression, and refuse to give him one.

"Your other self made gay puppet porn in the house and left vibrators lying around in his room. Believe me, it was pretty damn fast that I figured out the boots you preferred to knock were not of the stiletto variety. Or if they were, those heels were pushing out some serious man-calf."

"Oh," you say. It is quite probably the least verbose thing to come out of your mouth since you were seven years old. He continues, and with a sudden rush of heat-- anger or embarrassment, it doesn't matter-- you realise he is amused.

"Besides, my sister is dating a six-foot-tall alien chick who glows in the dark. I'm not going to ride you."

You have made a complete and total idiot out of yourself in front of your bro. In front of Dave Strider, whose works you idolised as a child and began to improve upon as a teenager, whose foresight and distant care left you with a hacked schoolfeeding booth that wouldn't brainwash you and an apartment stacked to the gills with canned food, whose surname you took and whose home you inherited; you have made an absolute idiot of yourself, broken your paramount cool, in trying to tell him something he already knew. Instead of the spatially-difficult desire to punch yourself in the face, you are suddenly driven to turn around, begin walking, and never stop. You don't get embarrassed. It isn't something you do. This is worse than when you had to tug Jake into your arms and let all your messy emotions actually show on your face to convince him you weren't joking, this is worse than talking Roxy through a bad night of drunken hallucinations and besotted weeping. 

Until you look a little closer and realise that Dave isn't just amused, he is relieved. It is a long moment before your frantic mental processing hits upon why.

He knew a you. He was raised by you, and you may have to apologise to him for that later, but he had his own expectations and perhaps-- yes-- his own fears. You were authority, and now you are fallible. As much as that irks you for your own sake, it seems to be something he needed. You haven't brought yourself below him, not by much: on the whole you've become on his level. He smirks, and no, he really isn't as blank-faced as his interviews show. You wonder if there's someone here to thank for that.

"So, who are you fucking?"

It takes less than a blink for you to have drawn your sword, and by the end of the strife you've gained a brother.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally for this prompt on the meme: http://homesmut.livejournal.com/15949.html?thread=33892685


End file.
